Global Governance, Global Culture, and Multiculturalism

Kazimierz Krzysztofek (Warsaw School of Advanced Psychology, Poland)

Abstract: A pivotal change has occurred: the great national
cultures no longer govern the circulation of culture worldwide. True, the larger nation states
still maintain their "cultural diplomacy" machinery (though continually reducing the related
expenditures), but their influence on the circulation of culture is next to negligible.
High-powered economic mechanisms actually dictate the rules of the game. Hierarchical, central
culture-peripheral culture relationships have been replaced by global culture-local culture
relationships, with local cultures here standing for any identity-based culture (national,
regional, etc.). This paper points out five responses of local cultures to globalization, factoring
in both internal and international concerns, and in conclusion addresses the fragility of
culture-related issues and the long road ahead toward maturation of a global consciousness.

Globalization

At the beginning of the 1990s, cross-border social processes appeared clear-cut: globalization,
including - perhaps especially so - the globalization of culture, appeared a foregone conclusion.
It looked like a megatrend that would swamp everything else, as had been the case with
modernization, a form of Westernization of the world that in the second half of the twentieth
century swept the whole globe and, local setbacks notwithstanding, has burgeoned in all
civilizations and cultures. This conviction lay at the heart of Francis Fukuyama's (1992)
end-of-history paradigm presaging the global triumph of liberal democracy and market economy, and
the progressive disappearance of ethnic feuds, religious conflicts, and other cleavages growing out
of the "bad history." The end of history, however, must not be understood as the "halt of the
history clock" and cease of the course of events, but as a resultant direction dominating over
contradictory particularizing vectors - a tendency leading to a globalized world.

But belief in the one-way thrust of this process - the triumph of liberal democracy, economics,
and culture - was dented by the writings of Samuel Huntington (1996), which created no less of an
intellectual stir, prophesying not an end of history but a clash of civilizations from which the
West as a civilization and culture was not necessarily destined to emerge victorious.1 At the time, the end-of-history vision was judged to be the most
desirable outlook for America and the world ("What's good for America is good for the world") and
Huntington's prognoses and diagnoses were seen as the most sinister version of international
processes since the end of East-West ideological conflict, as a sui generis writing on the
wall.

Samuel Huntington's writings put into question the universality of civilization. In his view,
the conflict between civilizations is the key to understanding the world. A modus vivendi
between them - a consensus rather that a common denominator of values - creates the only hope for
world order. Huntington develops a postideological, as well as culturalist, vision of civilizations
- a pluralistic, not universalistic, one. He presaged that the world would need policentrism rather
than universalism.

The myth of an end of history and of "velvet revolutions" adhering to its spirit was shattered
with the break-up of Yugoslavia and the outbreak of inter-ethnic conflicts in many parts of the
world (Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi). The clash-of-civilizations formula proved a
useful guide to interpretations of the sources of conflict, though as such it tended to be
overworked. End of history has since lost its lustre even though the appeal of a world without
ideology, militant ethnicity, nationalism, and particularism of all stripes was so strong that no
effort was spared to give it the semblance of reality.

The Huntington paradigm ran into criticism as vigorous as Fukuyama's, though, obviously, its
sources were different. Huntington was accused of making a fetish of conflict and negating the
historically self-evident fact that relations between "differing" societies have not been confined
solely to rivalry and struggle, but have also been examples of diffusion, imitation, and
interpenetration of values, in short, of co-operation and dialogue. Without these, there would be
no cross-cultural communication. It is an aspect of international discourse to which attention has
been drawn as far back as almost a century ago by the eminent sociologist Marcel Mauss. Thus, as an
explanation of the world's contours today and the megatrends of the future, the formula proposed by
Huntington is not enough, but neither is the simple formula of single-vector globalization of
culture à la the end-of-history thesis. There is no single dominant force unambiguously designating
the direction of the resultant situation.

How do we operate in this situation?

Global governance

Globalization involves a grand restructuring of the world, a global postindustrial revolution.
It is the first social process in history which - with the possible exception of any undiscovered
tribes in the backwoods of Amazonia or Papua New Guinea - affects all people whether they know it
or not. Its impact is greater than the buffers or breakwaters formed by the states which have
hitherto mediated in many international processes. The question that remains to be answered is:
What kind of order is needed to extend development and security to the whole planet, to ensure
"global governance"; that is, maintenance of social order world-wide, in which there is no world
government and responsibility rests on no actor alone? (Simai, 1994).

The problem is that in each particular sphere - economic, political, social, and cultural - we
are dealing with differing epochs or, as it might be, differing velocities. The market is the most
universal social institution, which accounts for this drive to globalization, whereas a
universalism of perspectives on human rights, human security, liberty, etc. is still far down the
road. Consequently, it is hard to visualize a democratic global government or global civil society
coming into being and taking on the task of such global governance. Yet, sooner or later someone
has to do this, someone has to create an order that guarantees a minimum of international justice.
The system for managing global affairs that evolved during the reign of bipolarity has undergone
partial erosion. One of the elements has been the United Nations, in scope and function the most
universal organization of its kind in history, but for a host of reasons it has been incapable of
discharging this task.

At present we see a new generation of human rights acquiring increasing significance. Hitherto,
the order in place was founded primarily on a political rights regime, reinforced by social and
economic rights, though these were not generally accepted as part of the canon. Now, with the
advent of the "age of identity" there have been calls for an acknowledgment of the claims of
collective, community rights. These are not rights that are popular with global business since they
smack of "jihad." The West, in particular the United States, opts to accord priority to individual
rights as the cornerstone of human rights in general. This is also a matter of sanctifying
individual property rights (which today mean, first and foremost, intellectual rights), the bedrock
on which the edifice of capitalism rests. The state is needed for the purpose of ensuring respect,
among other things, for these rights.

Human rights are one of the two regimes (i.e., systems of rules) on which the framework of a new
order is being built. The Decalogue of human rights is grounded in the canon established in the
West, from an American perspective, at any rate: the individual is autonomous, universal human
rights are the basis of social organization, violations of these are a threat to peace, and their
implementation on a global scale is the obligation of the international community which is
legitimated to exact compliance. The second regime is the trade regime presided over by the World
Trade Organization. Its basic principles are: non-discrimination, reciprocity of privileges, open
markets, privatization, and liberalization - the Western liberal trade model.

In addition, according to some scholars (e.g., Puchala, 1999), one can already speak of a third
regime taking shape: it is a political regime based on conditional national sovereignty and the
possibility of intervention in internal affairs, the will of a group of states to enforce
observance of the rules manu forte (strong arm) and to uphold United Nations legitimacy,
liberalism, democracy, and political-ideological forms of government consistent with these
principles.

These regimes derive from the Western catalogue of values and institutions. Of these, the trade
regime (the meaning application of free-market rules on a global scale) seems to possess the
highest degree of legitimacy, although as a result of decentralization of the world economy it is
becoming very hard to employ economic leverage as a means of coercing governments into not only
compliance with rules of commerce but also respect for human rights (although the WTO and the World
Bank are trying hard). The other two regimes enjoy a smaller range of powers, although the
hierarchical nature of international politics (the role of the U.S. and NATO) means they exhibit a
higher level of capacity to enforce observance of rules. Questions that need investigating are: how
this order works, how stable it is, to what extent is it accepted, how does it manage the amplitude
of universality and pluralism, and, perhaps most crucially, what are the institutions which bear
the burden of its operation and what is the legitimacy of the international regimes on which it
rests. Answers to these questions will have to reflect regional and national differences.

Will these regimes make it possible to cope with global problems? Can any assistance in this
come from global culture which does not function in any formal regime, but instead is part of both
the trade regime (commercialization of culture flows) and the human rights regime (cultural
rights)? This is a subject still awaiting investigation but there are one or two points that can
already be made in this context. They relate to the problem of the imposition of cultural models of
consumption by the whole machinery of advertising and other media of mass persuasion, initiation
into social roles, and the uses of these as a remedy for nationalism: in short, the "processing" of
everyone into consumers, thereby obtaining expected behaviours and ensuring predictability of
reactions by people for whom consumption becomes a common cultural code (Krzysztofek, 1999).

Briefly, the world media inundate our minds with symbols which are functional for the corporate
world, persuading us that progress means consumption. David Rothkopf (1997) has actually argued
that culture in this fashion is very necessary to the world because, as Thomas Friedman (1999) has
written, countries in which there are McDonald's do not wage wars against one another. In other
words, as Ignacio Ramonet (1999) observes ironically, the solution to war would be to buy everyone
Big Macs and build them Disney Worlds. The problem is, however, more complex. A cultural regime
could be said to exist only if there were a considered strategy for its implementation. But for the
moment it is, as noted earlier, subsumed into the trade regime since culture is simply a business
and the desired ideological effects are achieved as it were incidentally.

However, the lesson of history is that as well as political power (direct coercion) and economic
power, the governing have always made use of symbolic power, of the power to impose collective
representations (representational power), something that churches have long understood. Why should
things be any different today? The rules of a cultural regime are, however, unwritten ones.
According to Johann Galtung (1999), the overarching principle of a cultural regime's operation is
the capacity of the Western world for expansion. Implementation of this principle is pursued by a
wide variety of institutions which, although their specific province is economics, operate in the
symbolic, educational, informational, and cultural spheres: Hollywood, Disneyland, Madison Avenue,
and so on. Consistent with such an approach, the blueprint for global governance could also include
"consumerist infection," China being a case in point, as its citizens have never in the past been
colonized spiritually. The aim would be to overwhelm people (e.g., Islamic, Chinese) with
consumerism. Even if it fails to penetrate the bedrock layers of culture, consumerism supplies them
with a popular philosophy of life. This can prove to be strategically more important than military
or economic warfare, which are, in any case, not very effective weapons against China.

Global culture

In attempting to explain more clearly what is meant by global culture, one finds there
are a large number of far-from-clear-cut definitions to choose from. It can be defined as the
synergetic effect of market forces, technology, and freedoms of movement, a contemporary variant on
the well-known theme of cultural diffusion, which for centuries has been a subject of
study. We cannot know for certain, since we cannot empirically determine, whether the expansion of
global culture is an organized process or random diffusion. For that matter, this is true for
globalization in general. The conventional wisdom is that globalization is primarily "a spontaneous
civilization process, not a development strategy" (Szacki, 1998, p. 64). On the available evidence
it appears, however, to be driven primarily by economic mechanisms, though political profits are
usually also part of the equation. The creation and spread of global culture is governed by a
Decalogue: commercialization, liberalization, deregulation, privatization, advertising, innovation,
operation as a global actor, generation of new needs, translation of everything into imagery and
spectacle, and combating of intellectual piracy. Global culture does not perform any mission of
stimulating cultural development, solidifying identity, or developing cross-cultural communication,
and it is not concerned with improving people; it aims at earning its keep and paying its way. Its
patrons are the consuming public world-wide.

America has a large stake in promoting global culture since it is a prominent part of its own
commerce. In fact, global culture actually serves to promote American economic interests: in U.S.
exports, the audiovisual industry occupies second place behind aerospace and ahead of foodstuffs.
This is a function of the structure of the American market, over half of which consists of
non-material, symbolic goods (media, culture industries, entertainment, software, education,
advertising, goods transferred via networks, etc.). Hence the enormous pressure exerted by all
American agencies - from the federal government to the corporate world - for protection of
intellectual property. It is a matter of protecting jobs, wealth, and power.

This, of course, forms only part of the picture. Global culture no less than any other culture,
even when part of a global regime, performs certain ideological-cum-symbolic functions which, in my
opinion, play a significant part in shaping world order and global governance. In light of the
interrelationships between consumption, economics, and ideology, it is very clear that the
demarcation of culture as an autonomous sphere vis-à-vis economics no longer makes any sense: it
has, quite simply, become a thing of the past. Here we can see what a dead letter the Marxian
paradigm of base and superstructure now is: base is becoming superstructure and vice versa.
Hollywood's products are a potent instrument of ideological persuasion but at the same time are
excellent business. The only question is: which is subservient to which?

For what we are looking at here is not only the economization of culture (its
subordination to the marketplace), something we have known about for a long time, but also a
substantial element of reculturization of economics: there is, simply, a lot of money to
be made from consumer culture. Seen by audiences all over the world, Titanic netted its
producers close to two billion dollars (10% of this sum was consumed by its budget), assuring the
thousands of people involved in making it a comfortable existence. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic
cuisine restaurants make their money not only from processing culinary matter but also from selling
a more or less authentic multiculturalism. Yet multiculturalism is surely more than a cuisine: it
comprises the flavours, sounds, and smells of cultures exploited by the tourist industry, the most
commercialized nomadism in world history.2

However, globalization in culture denotes something more than, in George Ritzer's (1993) phrase,
"the McDonaldization of society." Global culture permeates local cultures, resulting in new
configurations. The situation presents us with colonization and resistance, with homogenization as
well as local hybrid forms and identities. Global culture "fabricates" both hybridism and
multiplicity and so is a phenomenon occurring at a variety of levels and generating co-operation,
tensions, conflicts, and all sorts of interflows (Kellner, 1998).

Responses of local cultures to globalization

The history of socio-cultural change provides many examples of ways in which established
cultures respond to invasion by a new culture. A great deal of interesting empirical material can
be found in the course of modernization processes in the underdeveloped world. In the case of
global culture, we likewise have a large number of scenarios to ponder, including the following
five: complete acceptance of global culture; total rejection of global culture; selective
adaptation; hybridization; and cultural dualism and pluralism. The kind of exemplars that
eventually crystallize from these will in no small degree determine the contours of world order and
global governance in this century.

Complete acceptance of global culture, meaning simple adaptation. Change will
triumph over continuity. This applies, in particular, to young people receptive to change, ready
to embrace new lifestyles, and fascinated by consumption, in short, susceptible to its
demonstration of higher life standards psychologically coupled with the irresistible will to
imitate. This is a powerful globalizing force. As studies of the contents of hypermarkets in
various parts of the world have shown, half the products come from the same multinational
corporations supplying the same name-brand symbols. An Indian film producer has described the
adoption of outward forms of culture by young Indians watching American movies, not only in their
manner of dress but also in their way of walking. Hence, a not unreasonable suspicion arises that
along with these forms, ideas and elements of ideology are also absorbed (Jameson, 1998). Culture
scholars see in this a generation factor: an overpowering drive by young people for emancipation
from traditional repressive cultures, and a constant need to deconstruct and reconstruct one's
identity. In the multiple-freedom and multiple-choice environment provided by the world of
consumption, change of identity exerts an enormous influence on the behaviour of individuals and,
in consequence, on the behaviour of societies. If the Burundians or Rwandans were consumer
societies, there might not have been any ethnic massacres, no eruptions of atavistic tribal
hatreds. There is, however, a weak point in this argument: How do you make consumers out of young
people condemned to poverty and the frustration bred by the demonstration effect of the consumer
lifestyle and the imitation effect that goes with it?

Total rejection of global culture, or lack of adaptation, indicates that people view
consumer culture as a threat. In this case, continuity prevails over change. The core of
indigenous culture - what Edward Shils (1970) calls the central value system - determines all the
bearings of people's activities: normative (morality, moeurs), expressive (art),
cognitive (education, knowledge), and instrumental (production). In this case, the generational
factor also plays a role: older people are more resistant to change. By and large, this is the
experience of cultures which are mentally furthest removed from and hostile towards the West.
Generally, it involves rejection but it can also take the form of active opposition not far short
of what Benjamin Barber (1995) has labelled "jihad," or a "holy war" against the West waged on a
cultural battleground.

Selective adaptation, or partial acceptance and partial rejection. This is one of
the most psychologically interesting and complex cases. People are attached to their cultures,
its values, norms, and institutions, but willingly embrace the outward forms of consumer culture:
dress, modes of entertainment, music, etc. The snipers in Sarajevo wore jeans of the same brand
as their targets; the executioners in Bosnia tortured their victims while listening to rap and
heavy metal. During the wars of the Middle Ages, from both enemy camps there resounded the same
Te Deum. In the most general terms, it can be said that when selective adaptation
occurs, consumer culture fails to penetrate the deepest layers of the identity-based culture and
manifests itself only in outward guises. Huntington (1996) seems to be right when he argues that
a Chinese or Iraqi eating a Big Mac or pizza does not cease to be Chinese or Iraqi. The impact of
global culture here is only of a modifying, not transforming, nature. This is characteristic of
the majority of changes which do not grow out of the soil of indigenous culture but rather are an
effect of cultural diffusion.

Hybridization, or co-adaptation of cultures, meaning a compromise between the local,
the national, the ethnic, etc. and the universalism of consumer culture. Some examples of such
metissage are by no means uninteresting amalgams, others are more reminiscent of
inter-species "bastardization" of cultures. According to the Mexican anthropologist Néstor García
Canclini (1992), globalization promotes eclectic forms and borrowings which lead to the
proliferation of a new species of cultures. Consequently, one of the complaints against global
culture - that it is responsible for corrupting identity-based cultures - is misplaced since that
has been the nature of cultural processes for thousands of years.

Cultural dualism and pluralism, or two or more levels of culture. This scenario
depicts the most desirable impact of global culture in which identity-based cultures remain
intact. People within the orbit of global culture are not deprived of participation in national,
ethnic, or local cultures. Global culture creates a universal communications code, which is
especially necessary for transacting business in a multicultural world. Such a positive dualism
is characteristic of educated women and educated men who, on the one hand, are expert in decoding
the symbols of global culture and, on the other hand, remain rooted in their own values and
symbols. Since they have not renounced culture, they do not feel out of place among strangers
because they entertain no prejudices towards them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of such people
with respect and fondness, describing them as "grands spirits" rising above the
imaginary barriers dividing nations. What we have in this situation is not hybridization but two
orders of values and models. Examples of this kind of dualism can be found in the cultural
reality of America where people are not condemned to the alternative of either participation in a
national culture or total commitment to their own identity-based cultures at the cost of
exclusion from the wider universe. These two strands of culture are perfectly complementary. The
United States, Canada, and a number of other immigrant nations enjoy a distinctive situation -
they are home to a cross-section of almost all cultures, which makes them a kind of pluralistic
"world in microcosm." The situation in Europe and many non-European countries has been
historically different: majority-minority relationships have created cultural unrest. Even if
adherence to one's own culture was not suppressed, it usually carried the risk of forfeiture of
life-chances. The American model of multiculturalism is one of the dynamos of U.S. expansion:
Americans simply have the capacity to accommodate diversity and, as a result, there is less
distance separating them from the majority of our globe's cultures.

Multiculturalism

Managing multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity is one of the most important factors of social
order internally and internationally. It is estimated that the number of ethnic minorities in the
world's 200-odd states exceeds ten thousand (minorities account for several percent or more of the
population in 90% of these states) and that some 5% of people do not live in the countries of their
birth. This means that the turn-of-the-millennium world has, due to ever-denser communications
networks, among other things, attained an unprecedented scale of diversity, paradoxically, in step
with progressive globalization.

For many reasons, however, our experiences with political strategies of multiculturalism do not
inspire optimism. And ethnic policy is becoming increasingly ineffectual because throughout the
world the private sector is swallowing up ever more areas of our lives and thereby rolling back the
public sector, for centuries the agora of societies. This is complicating implementation of
political strategies of multiculturalism. So far, a variety of strategies, some relatively
humanitarian, others less so, some positively inhumane, have been tried:

Ethnic cleansing, i.e., expulsion of a weaker, though not necessarily smaller, group from a
commonly inhabited territory.

Assimilation, i.e., forcible integration combined with depriving a minority of three rights
now recognized as standard: use of its mother tongue, cultivation of its culture, and use of its
own spelling of personal names.

Sanctioned ethnic pluralism, i.e., observance of the liberal principle of "live and let live"
embedded in the Anglo-Saxon tradition which ensures a certain range of freedoms but usually does
not promote social integration; indeed, it often leads to the exclusion of ethnic communities
from civil society or even to their ghettoization and reduction to Bantustan or underclass
status, to de facto apartheid.

Civic integration paired with respect for the "right to be different." This is what is
advocated in almost all the formulated models of desired multiculturalism to be found in
international documents (United Nations, UNESCO, Council of Europe, and European Union). The
recommendations set out in them are presented as the highest and most "politically correct"
standard for democracies which wish to make people civically equal while not making them
culturally alike. It clearly follows that for this multiculturalism strategy the most desirable
form the influence of global culture could take is one which does not undermine identity-based
cultures, the sense of belonging to a community, citizenship, and individual-community
relationships. The question is: Is it realistic?

The experiences of the 1990s (Bosnia, Kosovo) demonstrate that some states are unwilling, or
unable, to cope with these problems and that observance of the human rights regime has to be
exacted by force, which often proves ineffective. So a question worth asking is: what instruments
are there that can effectively ease or resolve the related and proliferating tensions and
conflicts, and can this problem be solved by political means or is there perhaps some other
way?

My hypothesis is as follows. The market by no means has to be dysfunctional for
multiculturalism; indeed, it can even promote it. Such a hypothesis is sharply at variance with the
prevailing one which is that the market, as the vehicle of globalization, destroys identity,
regiments cultures, eliminates differences, imposes dominance, Americanizes, McDonaldizes, etc.
More detailed analysis shows that the problem is more complex. Many arguments can be found to
support a claim that differentiation is coming about precisely as a result of globalization. To
reduce it to a homogenizing role is to oversimplify the essential nature not only of the
contemporary market, or markets, but also of culture. Such an approach dates back to the days when,
for many postwar years, modernization, that is, Westernization of the world, was indeed a
mega-trend. However, the idea that the market tends towards regimentation of cultures has its roots
in a period when it was busy "manufacturing" mass society and Western cultural imperialism. There
are many indications that this diagnosis is no longer valid and the age of mass society is drawing
to a close.

Just as the market and technology of the pre-industrial age produced mass society, so too is the
synergetic effect of the market and technology plus freedom creating a post-mass society. To
preserve mass society would now be pointless; it would go against the grain of the new technology
and market for which freedom is more functional. The obsolescence of "McDonaldization" or
"coca-colonization" of the world is therefore self-evident in the light of actual processes.

Global culture is not only a mass phenomenon but also a highly individualized one. Its newest
aspect, associated with the changing nature of markets and the potential of technology, is
essentially a post-mass phenomenon. Culture is capable of satisfying the most individualized
tastes, among other things, thanks to the Internet. The late-capitalist market is not only about
maximization of profit but also about differentiation (Firat, 1995). To use another oxymoron, we
could label this fraglization or globalized fragmentation, that is, a combination
of fragmentation and globalization. Global culture is "manufacturing" not only a "global village"
but also "villages on the globe."

Maximization of profit often also denotes maximization of differentiation. Post-mass culture is,
to use a convenient piece of shorthand, "individualization of the consumer's address," or
customization, since the contemporary market is primarily about consumption. Some scholars (Firat,
1995) argue that the boom in consumption of culture is at present attributable to the fact that
people, especially in the Western world, are tending less and less to belong to a culture and to an
ever greater degree becoming no more than its consumers. Belonging denotes a repressive role of
culture, as well as roots, attachment to norms, resistance to anomie, while consumption is
liberation not only from repressiveness but also from the operation of culture-supplied norms.
Multinational corporations produce diversity and assisted in this by the ideology of the
aforementioned "political correctness" with its imperative of respecting diversity and paying court
to otherness (Gitlin, 1995). In America they now refer to "moral markets," that is, the selling and
promotion of moral norms via advertising, marketing, public relations, and so forth which try to
avoid offending any minority, are environmentally friendly (natural and social), and are required
to instill patterns of consumption consistent with such an axiology, which is what the market wants
today (Hoffman & Novak, 1996).

However, "production of multiculturalism" by the market has little in common with what cultural
policymakers would like to see as the desired multiculturalism that performs integrative functions.
It is a fair guess that marketization of culture is perceived by the ideologues of late capitalism
as an essential component of the cosmopolitanism needed by the multiethnic West: Its job is to
serve up values which insure against ethnocentrism and intolerance and can further the process of
adaptation to the market and an open society. Such a culture is thought to possess therapeutic
qualities. It is expected to teach open-mindedness and how to live without blocks, to awaken the
need to achieve, and to look forward into the future, in short, to act as a "cure for history." The
alternative to such multiculturalism can only be a bellicose "jihad" waged in part as a response to
McDonaldization.

Consumption and multiculturalism strategies prompt the question: What is the nation becoming? Is
it still a community into which each person is born or does every generation have to renegotiate
the terms of being a nation and protecting national culture?

Multiculturalism requires a common symbolic code. Without such a code it is more expensive
because it becomes unpredictable. As Andrzej Walicki (1997) has observed, "the big multinational
corporations need people who are flexible, easy to transplant, uninhibited by national loyalties"
(p. 12). What are needed are people with a global mentality - homo mundialis - who are
achievement-oriented, liberated from collective identity, individualized, depoliticized, cured of
ethnicity and collective identity, and reduced to the consumer dimension. For these people, who
would generally work at a professional, managerial, or executive level, this assumption of a global
mentality would seem to work against the maintenance of distinctive national cultures. However, the
need to transcend nationhood is less strong for people at semi-skilled or unskilled levels.

Global culture is in a sense the ideology of a uniform meta-network of interests linking
national and transnational actors (Krzysztofek, 1999). This is a network of power, money,
information/knowledge, and culture, in other words, integration of the
socio-eco-info-techno-sphere. All of these factors correlate with the human activities that are
transforming the face of our planet, and they are interlocked. Power is a correlate of money,
knowledge, information and culture; money is a correlate of power, information (money as
meta-information), etc.; knowledge is a correlate of money, power, and culture; and culture is a
correlate of power (symbolic power), money (the mighty entertainment market), etc. One could draw a
whole map of such correlates. This network is the synergetic effect of two "forces of nature":
technology and the freedom of all kinds of material and intellectual transfers. Technology,
communications (nothing, after all, takes place in a communications vacuum), and freedom are the
parameters of the environment in which the global network operates. The major globalization
players, and the nucleus of an emergent transnational class, are company CEOs and their local
affiliates; some globally oriented government bureaucrats, politicians, and consumer elites; the
media; and trade (Sklair, 1995). Globalization is the solution for the network, while
provincialism, localness, specificity, and underdevelopment create problems.

Of the four multiculturalism strategies discussed above, the most desirable in terms of both
internal and international order is social integration combined with respect for the right to be
different. This means that a culture participating in the international marketplace can be of
assistance in global governance if it allows people to function in two dimensions: the
identity-based and the universal. A linguistic analogy will serve: English functions as a
lingua franca without destroying ethnic languages, although it undoubtedly influences
them.

It has to be realized, however, that the other, identity-based seam of culture is no longer and
will no longer be the same, at least in the Western world, as it used to be, that is, as a
regulator of individual and collective life. The cultural expressions which have blossomed in
postmodern societies (in the developed West) largely promote consumption, rather than regulation of
life and control; consider, for instance, Bavaria's Beer Festival. There is no hint here of a
"jihad" culture here.

The Janus face of global culture

Evaluations of global culture are and will be axiologically ambivalent, for global culture
presents different aspects of itself on every spot on the globe. It is a bearer of threats, but it
also creates opportunities. From a global governance point of view, its most functional element is
the fact that, in contrast to ethnic cultures, it "eliminates the category of other from
its discourse, its world being inhabited by persons having the same tastes, the same value systems,
the same problems" (Szpociñski, 1999, p. 68). In other words, this is a culture which is a stranger
to the idea of enemy or even "foreigner," someone who has to be kept at arm's length; all its
participants line up on one side. In the climate of such a culture, would the Holocaust or world
wars have been possible? However, it does have a weakness in that it remains viable only as long as
there appear no internal impulses (economic or political conflicts) which challenge the
taken-for-granted nature of its belief in the existence of one human family. In such a situation,
there is no body of common values, no cultural heritage, to which an appeal can be made and which
could whisper that something - culture and the values it embodies - links us with members of groups
with which we have come into conflict (Szpociñski, 1999).

But, does globalization lead to the dominance of a global culture? On this question of the
relationship between globalization and global culture, there are two conflicting views, each
supported by persuasive arguments. The first postulates that it does not necessarily follow that
the more globalization there is, the more global culture there is. Far from it. What we see now is
a law of psychology according to which the larger the amount of globalization detaching industry,
politics, culture, and values from native soil, the more people seek refuge within their own norms,
and the greater the degree of relativism, not universality, unless we assume that relativism is,
basically, universal, a contradiction in terms which is perfectly legitimate in a postmodernist
setting.

Hopes of curing peoples of militant ethnocentrism may, however, prove futile. Globalization
positively intensifies nationalism and ethnocentrism and does so, paradoxically, against a
background of a simultaneous weakening of the primacy of nations and the erosion of local cultures
and traditions through global culture. When some of the elements of specificity undergo
destruction, the result is the unravelling of the social tissue, degradation of cultural systems,
and detachment of industry from its own moorings and from the network of socio-cultural linkages.
When national sovereignty declines and frontiers become symbolic lines on the map, culture signs
and symbols come to the fore acting like fingerprints, something that people can call their own and
which does not melt into a single global culture. Attention was drawn to this by Karl Polanyi
(1957) and also by European authors from outside the Anglo-Saxon fold (e.g., Bernardi, 1998). This
is the key to understanding the present globalization-particularization amplitude and the fact that
globalization is not a single vector force. What is more, globalization does not have to be a
Western response, as modernizers have seen it. Various "tribes," the informaticized included, will
have differing futures since they have had differing pasts. Consequently, global culture need not
be and is not a Western culture; it will be a hybridized culture absorbing elements of various
origins (García Canclini, 1992) (see, for example, current Japanese culture, which comprises
elements of both Western and Eastern cultures).

According to the other side of the argument, time is working in favour of "disarmament," not
only of "jihad" but also of all anti-civilization rebellion. An important role in this is played by
the Internet, thanks to which there is unlikely to be any serious upsurge of protest in the
foreseeable future since the nature of late capitalist civilization is different. Over the past
three decades, processes have asserted themselves which are still largely uncharted. The society of
the Enlightenment Project - the industrial and intellectual revolution - is beginning to fade into
history. The birth of a postindustrial age in the developed world has been proclaimed and with it
hopes have been revived that computer civilization will inject new impulses into culture. The
postindustrial age has its own logic and narrative, or rather "multi-narrative." (This probably
accounts for the fact that since the counterculture of the 1970s there has been no major revolt
against civilization.)

Concluding remarks

The new civilization needs new forms of artistic creation, innovation, and adaptation, and the
culture that is emerging is a new departure, perhaps even a kind of opium, "digital opium" so to
speak. But there still remains a crucial problem: Can and should such a culture be left solely to
the uncontrolled forces of the market or is it possible and worthwhile to bolster it with some kind
of international cultural policy which would correct its defects and reinforce its virtues without
imposing undesirable regulatory or coercive measures? This also applies to economic policy which is
already regulated by the World Trade Organization, a body viewed by some as a World Ministry of
Trade in the making.

Culture-related issues are a delicate and controversial topic: witness the breakdown of the OECD
negotiations on the Multilateral Treaty on Investment. Culture was to be incorporated into the
trade regime despite the objections of some countries, notably France, which pressed for a special
status - l'exception culturelle - to be conferred on it. If culture remains part of this
regime the international community will be deprived of the tools to influence it. Ultimately, much
will depend on the principal "culture producers" - multinational corporations - and whether they
are capable of rising above the profit motive and making culture carry the message of global
ethics. The special status of cultural products in international trade is highly desirable and,
following the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, there are some grounds to believe in the
likelihood of this. For instance, it is conceivable that the principles on which some global
culture businesses operate, and on which U.S. foreign policy in this area is based, might be
"rethought" and altered in response to the trauma. The selling of popular culture is very
profitable, however, which makes me think that the business-as-usual principle will, in the long
run, overcome any traumatic feelings.

One of the sources of hostility towards the commercial culture marketplace and cultural
consumption as a regulator of identity is the national elites' loss of control, their inability to
any longer control which values should be preserved and which elements altered. This is a key
problem of cultural and educational policy. To an ever greater degree, the market, the universal
locus of legitimacy, is taking over the power to impart meanings, to portray culture, to signpost
space, to communicate. This is making the self-portraiture of one's own culture, which is so
desirable, so much more difficult.

Since the world will continue to be a world of diverse cultures and mentalities, because people
want to preserve their own codes, globalization can be seen, in effect, as nothing other than
construction of interfaces between cultures for comprehending codes without destroying them.
Multiculturalism as implemented by the market is a "network," not hierarchical, culture. The market
promotes not so much the preservation of community-based cultures as their preservation in
individuals. Construction of interfaces furthers consumption and is also a boost to international
business since every business requires an agreed-upon code. Multiculturalism without a code is very
costly because it is unpredictable. The code, it is expected, will expedite maturation of a global
consciousness and ethics, a sense of commonality of destinies. This is a conclusion which might to
some extent dispel the ubiquitous, pessimistic belief in the pernicious consequences of the
globalization of culture.

Notes

1

Incidentally, it is felt by some students of international relations, including some in
America (e.g., Tehranian, 1997) that the White House treated the works of both Fukuyama and
Huntington with excessive reverence (almost equalling the response to George Kennan's famous 1947
article in which he defined the basic principles of an American strategy for containment of
Communism) and ignored many other worthwhile diagnoses and suggestions relating to the
construction of world order.

2

The well-known financier Jacques Attali (1991) predicts the emergence in the world of a
super-class of nomads numbering some tens of millions, equipped with the means of communication
and production, including symbols, and a billion-strong underclass of nomads searching for
chances of survival. The rest will be an increasingly depressed middle class, the mass culture
audience and cannon fodder of pop culture. Entertainment will ease the pains of coming to terms
with instability and upheaval, and games, vacations, holidays, sport, group religions, travel,
and drugs will maintain some kind of order - but will this be effective insurance against anomie?
Attali is undoubtedly close to the truth when he argues that the entertainment industry is not
only a source of profit but also a farm of symbolic control and role initiation designed to be a
shield against revolution.